[mythtv-users] mythrename.pl flogs my system if run during recordings.

[David Whyte]

Evening all,

I run the version of mythrename.pl included with ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy)
every 15 minutes to create a human-friendly list of recordings across
the three drives in my default storage group.

If run whilst the system is idling, this is fine.  If run when the
system is recording, for some reason, the load average on my server
goes up to ~5 and the system becomes somewhat unusable.  Even the
mythweb status page sometimes fails to load and I get the odd error in
the backend log like...

   QSocketDevice::writeBlock: Invalid Socket

I have uploaded a screenie of my monitoring application (Zabbix) which
clearly shows increased load at 15 minute intervals during the
afternoons recordings (14:30 - 15:30) and the very high load this
evening since I record a number of simultaneous shows, with
commflagging etc.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/WhLOm_EWqa9_iJOUTr7uug?feat=directlink

Obviously, I have stopped the script from running in the future but
the output was handy since it allowed me to have a samba share with
the listing of all recorded files.  Since stopping the script from
running, the load has been much more constant.

Where can I go about looking at the cause of these problems?  Is it
disk related to symbolic links, disk as the script queries the DB,
pure lack of processing grunt for this activity (surely not) or
something else?

Any hints are welcome, as always.

Regards,
Whytey